School Committee unanimously approves contested emotional support dog policy

School Committee members this week unanimously approved a districtwide emotional support dog policy that contained details opposed by some educators.

The board’s approval came at its Wednesday night meeting after a public hearing to get input on the contested policy.

The approved policy includes contested language prohibiting classroom teachers from acting as handlers of emotional support dogs.

At the Jan. 21 public hearing, three members of the Waltham Public Schools community spoke in support of removing the prohibition. 

Former emotional support dog handler and MacArthur Elementary School fifth grade teacher  Toni Mecionates was one of the three. 

Mecionates faulted the committee for failing to include educators in crafting the policy, although she said she agrees a policy is necessary.

“I think the communication was one of the things that caused this problem, and it could have been avoided at the very beginning by a simple conversation,” Mecionates said.

At previous meetings the committee had heard from Julia Norman, a digital learning teacher at MacArthur, about the school’s experience with Mecionates as a handler of its former emotional support dog, Nala.

At those previous meetings, Norman had requested, on behalf of the MacArthur staff, that the committee remove the language prohibiting classroom teachers from acting as handlers of emotional support dogs.

Before approving the policy at its Wednesday meeting, committee members Debbie Coleman and Tammy Wong-Bigelow said they had researched state and national policies, noting that those policies said teachers were not permitted to act as handlers of emotional support dogs.

Coleman added that since committee member Sabrina DeJoannis requested the committee hold a public hearing, she had received calls from community members who didn’t want to attend the hearing, expressing their concerns about letting teachers act as handlers.

“[The callers expressed] a lot of concern over a classroom teacher being a handler, asking if the dog is sick, dog needs to go home, does a teacher have to leave?” Coleman said.

School Committee members also approved a proposal from Wong-Bigelow to amend the new policy. The amendment adds an expedited approval process to bring an emotional support dog to a school in cases when an urgent or emergency social, emotional or traumatic need of an individual student or student body is identified.

The policy passed with a vote of 6-0 following the amendment’s approval.